Word of the Day – “Steuer”

and welcome to our German Word of the Day. This time we’ll have a look at the meaning of a word for something that many people are behind and against…. AT THE SAME TIME!!!
Ohhhhhh… so mysterious :).“Well, actually… I can just stand behind a tree and lean against it. No big deal.”Shut up, inner critic. You’re ruining my intro.“Just sayin’. It’s not all that myste…”
Well, how about this then: the word we’ll look at today has two totally different meaningsand you have to pay one for the other. Is that mysterious enough for you?“Hmmm.. yeah, that’s better. Although… “
Gee, whatever. Today, we’ll look at

You probably guessed it. Starboard has nothing to do with the stars. It comes from the verb to steer, which is about the idea of giving direction, and that’s also the core of das Steuer. It is the device to “steer” with.

Cool.
So this was das Steuer. And the other one? What does die Steuer mean? Well, it means … tax.Das Steuer is a device for steering, die Steuer is a tax. Hmmm… sounds like a random pairing, but think of the ever rising tax on tobacco. That’s the government trying to get the people to stop smoking. Taxes as a means of soft-“steering” the people. That makes a lot of sense. But then again…was that really what monarchs had in mind? Like… were health concerns the reason why the king of France came up with the much hated tax on salt?

Proclaim to the realm: henceforth a tax shall be paid on salt,
for I am concerned about my subjects’ blood pressure.

Hardly. He just thought it was a clever way to get cash. So as compelling as the connection of tax and steering is, it’s not how the words connect.
So how do they connect? Is there even a connection?
Yes, there is. Steuer is actually one of the many many offspring of the super ancient Indo-European roots *sta-. That’s where to stand and stehen come from and die Steuer was simply once a general word for something that was standing and that helps you stand, and it could be a pole, a pillar or more figurative support. Like … a tax. Money helping the ruler “stand”.
And what about das Steuer and steering? How does the idea of giving direction tie in? Well…here’s a picture.Poling a raft or a boat. Using a large pole to move it and direct it. So essentially it went from standing, to pole, to pole used for steering a boat to steering. Quite a crazy evolution, right? Go ahead, put it on the list of stories to tell your crush on the first date. You’ll be steering right for third base.
Big promise.

Speaking of broken promises… let’s look how to say tax cutsand the other common tax words in German.

Jesus, Doppelbesteuerungsabkommen… this is humongous. By the way, do you know why the German language possesses such whales of words?
One theory says it’s because of, get this, taxes!
Back many many years, a king of Bavaria had a problem. He wanted to build the Disney cartoon castle but he needed loads of cash. So he came up with a brilliant idea… a tax on words. Not only would that create massive revenue, it would also shut down the incessant chatter at court, that gave him such a headache.
Or so he hoped.
But since the dawn of time, man has unleashed his full divine creativity when it comes to tax evasion. And just like the Brits would wall up their windows to evade the window tax, the German people came up with a work around. Compounds. Prefix verbs were first, but soon the “words” got longer and longer and little money was payed.
Crestfallen, the king secluded himself more and more, and the castle ended up the pathetic piece of crap that today is know as… Neuschwanstein.

I’m not a historian though, so I might be off here and there. By the way, what about my inner critic? Where has he been through all of this? Where are you when I REALLY need you, huh?!?! You let me down, man! You let everyone down!!!
Anyway, that’s it for today. This was today’s episode of “History with Emanuel”, where some of it was actually true :).
Oh, and we learned something about tax and steering, too.
As always, if you have any questions or suggestions or if you want to try out some examples, just leave me a comment. I hope you had fun.
Schöne Woche und bis nächstes Mal :).

Hi Emanuel thanks for another eminently digestible post. This word versteuern. You translate it as “to pay tax on sth” (just as Google translate and dict.cc do) yet you also clarify that the word concerns itself more with stating the income in your tax return. Thanks for this clarification. Us accountants do use phrases like “declaring taxable income” or just “declaring income” which seem to fit the idea more closely than “to pay tax”.

I’m not sure if you have such an article yet, but if not, you should do a special on all the words pertaining to events, occurrences and cases (not the cases that we LOVE ;). I’ve been reading newspapers and magazines and marking any vocab I don’t immediately understand, and I’m noticing that the words for events and other related words keep popping up. Specifically, I see the word “Veranstaltung” and can only think, “Wow, that word looks very german.”

You do such a great job of noting any obscure nuances in the words and making them easier to fluently grasp, that I’m sure I wouldn’t have to keep guessing at them.

I’ve written some about “passieren” in the article on “passen” but that’s about it so far. Well…. Veranstaltung will have an entry in my first book (feeding the hype :D
By the way… yeah, “Veranstaltung” does look really German now that you say it.

If I had read that sign, the “geschehen” would have gone unnoticed but now that you’ve mentioned it, it’s definitely an odd phrasing. Not that it’s unidiomatic or something. It’s just a weird way to express the idea that the reader does something.
I guess as usual they want to avoid having a person. But “wird auf eigene Gefahr gemacht” is more complicated, sounds clunky and also, it sounds a bit too “productive”.
“passieren” would sound even more odd… as if noone actually does anything.
I think a similar phrasing would be this:

Guten Tag, Emanuel! I was have a bad day so I decided to read your new post. Hearing you try to pronounce Doppelbesteuerungsabkommen made me laugh and really brightened up my day. So, King Ludwig II is the reason why the German words are so doggone long. Your blog German is easy! is really difficult for me, I am having a hard time with it. I think it is best I quit while I am ahead. Danke for the posts.